I’m copying here a post I wrote in response to someone who was depressed.

I hope it helps others too.

Blessings,
Maya

Question:

Question: How does a person who has been treated for anxiety and depression for create a good life using the power of the mind (which is naturally negative an confused due to brain chemistry, genes and life experience)? How does one create more positive than negative experiences with this genetic make-up? (A cry for help) Am I doomed?

My response:

Not doomed!

#1 – Use, “Thoughts are things” to your advantage – Transform depressing beliefs and thoughts about pain, frustration or upset into an understanding of what you Yearn for that is at the root of your pain. This is very healing. For every negative, pessimistic thought there is either a need to grieve or a need to integrate a value from the subconscious to the conscious so that the Divine that you Are can stand up for what is needed.

I know a *lot* about the question you’re asking – I had a Coach Certification school and healed my own life with the work I taught – I live it still daily. Let me know when or if you want more. Grieve, baby, your sadness is a guide that points to the Hand of Divinity that you Are.

#2 – Watch your body – diet, sleep, movement. You can’t feel better if your biochemistry is out of whack. For one – healthy organic non-gmo food – We are surrounded by toxins, and many things the body needs to stabilize emotion – are not in our daily diet! Some great starters – I do 5K Vitamin D a day, daily Vitamin C (1000mg), eat Live whole food not premade manufactured stuff, lower your carb intake to 130 carbs a day (drop almost all refined carbs and sugars totally), and make sure your Seratonin levels are supported (sleep until your body wakes organically, make sure you have SOME healthy complex carbs – 20-30g – each meal), increase your iodine intake (our RDA is 150mg/day, Asian populations take in 13,000mg/day, I take 5 drops of Thyadine a day). Walk 5-15 minutes a day. Get sunshine at least 15min a day. If you have constipation – eat 6-8 fistfuls of above-ground veggies every day to help clean out your gut and stay regular every day. These go a LONG way to helping your body chemistry.

#3 – Make a commitment to your joy – and then make daily ways to feed your joy. Do you get enough sleep? Do you take time for yourself? Do you pamper your body? Make a list of 15 things that you Love to do and that you can do for joy, and do at least 1 every single day, no excuses. Here are some of mine: I love sewing, studying alternative energy stuff, listening to music, dancing, talking to friends over the phone, and doing dress-up (hair and makeup stuff tickles me). Start a list and add to it every chance you get.

#4 – Get off environmental toxins – SLS in our detergents and cleaning products and bathing products, BHT in our canned food, soy causing estrogen dominance, corn / wheat / milk allergies that shift mood, sugar’s negative impact on our immune system and body health, floride in our water and toothpaste, chlorine in our water and pools – all of these effect the body’s chemistry – including emotional states. Some calcify the pituitary gland. Do research, learn, and get yourself free from toxins as much as you possibly can!

#5 – Environmental toxins – fear-mongering TV, news, people wallowing in victim-mentality instead of taking the bull by the horns and standing relentlessly for cooperation toward solution — inadvertently we can immerse our minds and hearts in super-depressing environmental influences. Choose in favor of your Sanity and Change Your Influences to ones that are optimistic, actively being the world they want to see, and supportive.

I could do this for days. Let me know when you are ready for more. I teach about 7 aspects of your BodyMind system, and 3 areas where you can help your Mental Hygiene – so that you can get a fighting chance!

I like “The Secret”, within reason. Just like the book, “Think And Grow Rich”, and the book, “The Science of Getting Rich”, I won’t deny that how we think effects what we do and how we do it. Where ever we go, there we are, and there our beliefs are that come with us.

However, I also think that the concept, “Thoughts are Things” only partly gets the job done. I’ve lots of friends who subscribe to, “The Secret” who are still “trying” to get what they want.

And you’ve heard me talk about the whole system of you (mind, body, spirit, heart, gut, action, environment) if you’ve done anything with The Integrated Approach (TIA – “TEE-ah”).

Meanwhile, here’s a way you can Transform “The Secret” To Results in 30 Minutes Or Less!

WHAT TO DO:

Decide what it is you want to manifest. Your response might be something like, “more love”, “more money”, or “more delight about my job”.

Transform the “more” into measurables. How will you know when you’ve landed? How much? By when? Your response might be something like, “A life partner before Dec 2009” or “$10K more income by Nov. 15th” or “I rank myself at a 7 or above of delight (on a scale of 10) about my job by this time next week”.

Name 1-3 underlying values you’re trying to fulfill with this desire. (For a list of core motives, underlying values, universal needs, go to page 2 of this document)

For 90 seconds, experience the joy, delight and fulfillment of what it looks like when you’ve ALREADY experienced fulfillment of #1. What do you feel? Where in your body do you feel it? What’s different about your posture, your emotions, how you think, how you talk, or how you act? How are others treating you differently? How does that feel? Stay with this until you experience the delight at a 7 or above (on a scale of 10).

This is the important part: As soon as you have hit your 7-or-above on #5, go do something right now that is precisely what you’d be doing when you are already fulfilled on this thing that you want. This isn’t about doing something *toward* getting what you want. You can (and likely will) do that later. This is about embodying that you are already there, right now. If your desire was for “more love”, maybe right now you’ll spend 10 minutes journaling and cherishing how fulfilling it is to have so much love in your life. If your desire was for “more money”, maybe what you’d do right now is go relax in the sunshine for 10 minutes and enjoy the breeze – now that you have what you need you can rest. If your desire was for “more delight about work”, maybe what you’ll do right now is a bit more work you love, because that’s what you’d do right now if you were in love with your work.

By combining “The Secret” with complementary practices from other domains, we get a tool that gets the job done more quickly, more effectively, and with longer-lasting results. How else can you “melt the ice cube from all sides”(tm) ?

Here’s an exercise I offered in one of my teleclasses toward cultivating Gratitude and Celebration. In this case, the exercise is applied to self-acknowledgement. And how many of us couldn’t use a bit more acknowledement from time to time?

For me, gratitude and celebration isn’t just about feeding my high of joy – gratitude and celebration are subtle-body life blood. If our passions, our deepest purpose, and our desire to contribute are the soul that unconsciously keep us waking up in the morning, still we need to nourish our energy cup to have the strength to continue and to press on in the face of daily challenges. As I increase my frequency of letting my subtle-body fill with the impact of my gratitude and celebrations, so too do I have increased energy and capacity to move forward, to press on, to climb even to the top of the peaks of Mount Everest.

“High achievers spot rich opportunities swiftly, make big decisions quickly and move into action immediately. Follow these principles and you can make your dreams come true.”

– Robert H. Schuller

I love this quote; to me it translates to “successful people make decisions quickly”. Let’s not make the mistake though of confusing wide-reaching, systemic decisions with low-risk, low-impact decisions that affect only a small circle in the system.

When I’m making general, day-to-day, low-impact decisions, I try to remember that I want to thrive, and life is short. So my practice is to notice when I’m hedging or dragging my feet, and just pick a choice. Just pick one. I realize I can always correct the handlebars on the bike if I find I’m going too far out of the way of my intended direction. But if I sit on the bike mulling over which direction to set the handle bars, I’m never getting anywhere.

More systemic-impacting decisions I’ll take more time to do due diligence, but still, the idea is to inform myself to the best of my abilities in a reasonable amount of time and then choose, knowing I may always adjust the direction later if new information comes in.

A multi-millionaire I once worked with said, “Successful people make decisions quickly and change their minds slowly. Unsuccessful people take forever to make up their minds and then change their mind continually.”

Hrm…should I or shouldn’t I take this advice…hrm…let me think…

*wink*

How might I / you / we apply this to a more powerful, effective, thriving life for us, our families, our work places, and our planet?

When I was in college (just last year….heh yeah right) I crossed paths with a concept I call, “Programming and Metaprogramming the Human Biocomputer”. The phrase alone turned me on. I mean, what? We can reprogram our brains as easily as a computer geek can reprogram a computer? How cool is that?

For years since then (what? i just graduated, remember?) I was intrigued by anything related to helping myself and others generate what we want from the complex system of our brains, rather than being run by genetics, social brainwashing, or peer pressure. I wanted to know how to master my body-mind system, rather than be hijacked and run by it.

So here’s a small gift for you. This list is a collection of techniques I picked up along the path, tried-and-true processes for personal selective repatterning (see how good i learned to speek in school):

Techniques For Quick and Easy Habit Replacement

1. Healthier, Better, Kinder – Whatever habit you want to replace, find an alternative habit that is healthier. For example, when I was 17 and wanted to stop biting my nails, each time I was tempted to bite my nails I instead taught myself to massage my cuticles. This would improve blood flow and help my nails grow longer, stronger, faster. It also gave me something kinder to my body than destroying my nails with my teeth. A client wanting to lose weight didn’t want to give up her choice and freedom in what foods to eat, so we experimented with her taking a walk each time she wanted to munch between meals. Not only did she cultivate her health through the exercise, it also improved her metabolism (increased calorie burning through increased activity) and cut her between-meal munching by more than half.

2. The 21-day Game – Whether you’re trying to integrate a new habit or a trying to replace an old habit, practice for 21-days. I forget the source of where I found this, but if you consistently repeat something for 21 days, I understand it helps generate synaptic connections in the brain; you are physically re-hardwiring your system. Remember habits start out as nothing but electrical impulses in the brain, so if you allow a pattern to atrophy for 21 days, or if you create a new pathway for the impulse to fire (massaging cuticles was a new pathway) for 21 days, or if you repeat your new habit for 21 days, you’re literally rewiring your bio-machine in the direction of your choice.

3. Blue on Blue, Woohoo – For quick and easy memorization (especially useful for mantra / affirmation / declaration cards or new learnings), try writing your statement on a blue index card in blue ink. Again I have to find the original reference for this, but I recall reading that when we look at items in blue, the brain actually has an easier time imprinting it / memorizing it. If you find this reference would you email me please? gail@integratedcoaches.com

4. Key Moments of Suggestibility – When you want to induce a message for yourself that will sink in quickly and easily, do your practices when your subconscious is most suggestible. When is that? When you’re very sleepy, very hungry, or in a post-orgasmic state, your subconscious tends to be less guarded, more open and receptive. So if you are practicing a new declaration, review it in the morning when you wake and are still groggy, or last thing before you go to bed and you’re dead tired, or (well you get the idea). My favorite story about this: a 20-something client who as a child was a victim of repeat rape wanted to reclaim her love of the male body, but nothing she tried worked. I recommended she try a 21-day practice of, during a post-orgasmic state, imagining herself with a nude, loving man, and relishing his form, delighting in it. After only 7 days, the client reported a radical, apparently miraculous change: she no longer was repulsed at the idea of a nude man with her. We’ve stayed in touch, and even years later she reports highly successful relationships with men, including sexually, and she beams at the thought of the male body. If a trauma-victim can have this level of recovery in a mere 7-days, what could you experience?

5. Loving Kindness for the Ex – No, I’m not talking about your love relationship with another, I’m talking about your love relationship for you and the habit you’re attempting to replace. “What we resist, persists,” and what we banish about ourselves (or others!) only becomes repressed and returns in darker, stronger form. Remember that the habit you had was at some level an attempt to gift yourself or others. My nail-biting was an outlet for a very nervous, unsettled 17-year old girl. All of us are doing the best we can with what we have, all the time. By holding yourself (and your ex-habits) gently, you gently give yourself room to evolve, and you increase the likelihood of maintaining whatever gifts your old habit was trying to give you.If you’d like support on using this habit-replacement or new-habit technology, feel free to call me for a complementary hour-long consultation toward an ongoing coaching relationship. You can even start slowly – you can start with something as small as 4-sessions a cycle! To reach me toll-free, call 1.877.535.5438, or you can email me.

Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to return to my college graduation party planning. (Ok, the 2-year anniversary of my graduation? No? Ok the 10 year? *sigh*)

Many of my coaching clients get tremendous results and benefit from a body of work I’ve created called “Powerful Requests”. Although it goes in tandem with another body of work I call “The 10-Minute Manifestor” – “Powerful Requests” elements also often stand alone.

Here’s an excerpt from “Powerful Requests” that I hope you’ll enjoy using!

Warmly,GailDirecting versus Informing

Directing and Informing are two styles of how we can make requests. In Directing, we explicitly direct the person to fulfill what we’d like (we ask that they tell us something, or do something that will meet a need for us, or agree to a change that will gift us both). In Informing, we simply give them information and let them come up with a thought about what they’ll do about it.

Both styles are powerful. In the play of energies of yin and yang, if we imagine that the Informing style is yin, and the directing style is yang – by having full skill to use both, we can more effectively support the world around us. Some people will resent being directed; meeting them with yin Informing style may be a gift that opens them. Some will be confused if they are met with the Informing style and not take action to attend to the needs at hand. They may find it a gift to be simply directed at what it will take to contribute to the need on the table.

Often when clients come to me for help to manifest the kind of ease, fulfillment, and thriving they’d like, they may be adept at Informing but not so adept at Directing.

The skill of clearly, explicitly speaking to your underlying needs and what you want others to do about contributing to your needs can make or break your life thriving.

Extract on Stronger Directing:

When making a request, be sure your request tells the person (or yourself) what you want Done – not just the outcome you want or the circumstances you experience.

Client: I told him I wanted a lighter schedule!G: As him, I hear you giving me information, but it doesn’t tell me what you want me to do. You might opt to strengthen your request with:

Ex: I’d like no more than 3 hours this week. Could you tell me if that’s workable?Here you’re telling them to do something – to tell you if they can honor the prior sentence.

Other direct requests (ones that tell the speaker what you want them to do) might include:Ex: Please tell me which 3 hours you’d like of me.Ex: Please erase 7 of the 10 hours from my schedule.Ex: Please schedule me only on Monday from 9-12.

The more you direct, rather than inform, the more likely your request will be met.

Would you like 5 free ideas for how to turn something you want into a more “Powerful Request”? Include it in your comment, and I’ll respond!